The Glided Cage

New York, the 1870s. In the gambling establishment of Mr. Burns people are killed and disposed of in a rat pit in the cellar. The dead return and force Burns to a tour of the pit himself.

The gaslight in Mr. Burns’ establishment, ‘The Gilded Cage,’ always seemed to flicker with a nervous energy, casting long, dancing shadows that swallowed the true grime of the place. It was a handsome den of sin on the outside, all polished mahogany and etched glass, but within its walls, on any given night in 1870s New York, fortunes were lost, futures were gambled away, and sometimes, lives simply vanished.

Burns himself was a man carved from granite and greed, his eyes like chips of river stone, cold and assessing. He ran a tight ship, an efficient machine where every debt was paid, one way or another. And if a debt couldn't be paid with coin, it was often paid with silence.

Deep below The Gilded Cage, beneath the clatter of chips and the murmur of hushed bets, lay a secret known only to Burns and his most trusted, most brutal enforcers. The cellar, a damp, malodorous space, culminated in a brick-lined pit. It wasn't large, perhaps ten feet across, but what it contained was vast in its horror. A squirming, living carpet of rats. Brown, black, grey, red-eyed, and perpetually hungry.

It was where the insoluble problems went. The cheaters, the witnesses to an inconvenient truth, the men who truly couldn't pay and simply became too much bother. Gus and Silas, Burns’ muscle, were adept at the grim task. A weighted sack, a swift, final blow to the temple, and then the sickening splash as the body, still warm, was surrendered to the gnawing, feasting horde below. The rats, Burns often mused, were the ultimate clean-up crew. Efficient, discreet, and utterly without conscience. Much like himself.

One particularly fog-choked November night, another "problem" arose. A young, cocky card sharp named Finnigan had been caught with a palmed ace, his face paling to the color of ash when Burns’ cold gaze settled on him. No words were exchanged. Gus and Silas simply appeared, their hands like vises on Finnigan’s arms, and he was gone.

Burns heard the muffled struggle, the thud, then the faint, wet splash from below. He took a sip of his whiskey, the acrid smoke from his cigar curling around his impassive face. Another loose end tied off.

But that night, something shifted.

He retired to his opulent chambers above the gambling floor, the silk sheets cool against his skin. He expected the usual dreamless sleep of the unburdened. Instead, a faint scratching began. Not from the walls, not from the street outside, but from within the floorboards, seemingly right beneath his bed. It was the sound of a thousand tiny claws, of chittering teeth, incredibly close.

He sat up, annoyed. He paid good money to keep the rats out of his quarters. He lit a lamp, the gaslight sputtering. Nothing. The scratching stopped the moment the flame bloomed. He lay back down.

Then came the smell. A faint, cloying odor of damp earth, decay, and something else �" something metallic and thick, like old blood. He pulled the sheets up to his chin, a prickle of unease rippling down his spine. This was absurd. He was Mr. Burns. He controlled things.

The next night, the scratching was louder, accompanied by a low, guttural murmur that seemed to rise from the floorboards. He swore he heard his own name, distorted, wet. "Burns..."

His sleep became a purgatory of half-dreams and waking nightmares. Faces flashed in the darkness: Finnigan, pale and accusing; old Man Crosby, whose debt had cost him more than money; the Frenchwoman, her eyes wide with terror as she’d been dragged away. Their features were blurred, indistinct, but their presence was undeniable. They were in his room. In his mind.

He started drinking more, his usual composure fraying. His staff noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the way he flinched at sudden sounds, the way he constantly sniffed the air, convinced of that putrid smell.

One evening, as the last of the gamblers stumbled out into the pre-dawn gloom, Burns sat alone at his desk, totaling the night's take. The silence of the empty hall was oppressive. Then, a distinct drip. He looked up. A dark, viscous liquid was seeping from the ceiling, pooling slowly on the polished mahogany. It smelled of the cellar. Of the pit.

He scrambled back, knocking his chair over. The dripping quickened. Then, from the doorway of his private office, shadows coalesced. They were indistinct at first, like smoke given form, but as they solidified, Burns gagged.

Finnigan stood there, his face impossibly pale, one eye socket empty, the other staring with a milky, unseeing gaze. His fine suit was torn and stained, and where his hands should have been, there were only tattered strips of flesh. Behind him, Man Crosby, his neck bent at an unnatural angle, swayed like a pendulum. And the Frenchwoman, her dress shredded, stood with her mouth agape in a soundless scream.

More forms emerged from the shadows of the main room, spectral, skeletal, their features bearing the marks of their gruesome end. There were dozens, perhaps scores, of them. The air grew impossibly cold, and the fetid smell intensified, burning his nostrils.

"Gentlemen," Burns croaked, trying to regain his composure, trying to find his revolver. His hand trembled. "What is the meaning of this?"

They did not speak, not with words. But a chorus of silent, damning accusations filled his mind, a wave of cold dread and crushing despair. Their eyes, those hollow, accusing eyes, pulled at him.

Finnigan took a step, then another. The sound of his bare, mangled feet dragging on the floorboards was sickening. He raised a tattered arm, pointing a skeletal finger towards the cellar door.

Burns tried to run, to scream, but his legs were rooted. A cold, unseen force gripped him, pulling him from his chair, dragging him across the floor. He scrabbled at the rich carpet, his fingers tearing at the threads. The other specters moved around him, a silent, shuffling procession, guiding him towards the cellar steps.

He saw Gus and Silas, slumped against the wall of the main hall, their eyes wide open, unseeing, their faces contorted in silent horror. Whatever had brought these dead men back, it had frozen the living.

Down the steps he was dragged, his body heavy, his mind screaming. The cold intensified with each descending foot. The smell was overwhelming now, a putrid miasma that tasted of death and decay. And then, the sound.

The chittering. The squealing. The frantic scurrying. It was a roar, a living, squirming cacophony that pulsed from below.

At the bottom of the steps, the specters stopped. They released him, but he couldn't move. He stood on the edge of the pit, the gaslight from the main floor barely reaching this far, revealing the heaving, restless mass below. Thousands upon thousands of red eyes gleamed up at him, reflecting the last sliver of hope in his own.

The forms of his victims encircled him, their terrible, silent gazes fixed. They pointed, not just Finnigan now, but all of them. Their collective will was a physical force, pushing him forward.

He closed his eyes, tears streaming down his face, the first genuine tears he had shed in decades. He tried to resist, to brace himself, but there was nowhere to go. He felt a final shove, a cold, spectral touch at his back.

He tumbled forward, arms flailing, and plunged into the abyss.

The fall was mercifully short. The impact was not with solid ground, but with a writhing, living mass. The shriek that tore from Burns’ throat was not human. It was a sound of ultimate, unholy terror. He felt the needle-sharp teeth, thousands of them, tearing, burrowing, racing over his skin. He felt the squirming bodies, a living blanket of fur and muscle, consuming him. The smell was in his mouth, in his lungs. The darkness was absolute, broken only by the pinprick gleam of a thousand hungry eyes, all focused on him.

The screams stopped abruptly. The chittering continued, perhaps with a new frenetic energy.

Above, the spectral figures lingered for a moment, their hollow gazes fixed on the agitated blackness of the pit. Then, as if their gruesome task was complete, they slowly, silently, faded back into the oppressive shadows from which they had come.

The Gilded Cage remained, its gaslights still flickering, its doors still open to the unwary. But Burns was never seen again. And some nights, when the fog rolled in thick from the Hudson, the few remaining patrons swore they could hear, not the clatter of dice, but the faint, insistent chittering of a thousand hungry mouths rising from deep within the cellar, and a lingering, metallic scent that was not quite of dust, nor decay, but of a debt finally, irrevocably paid. The pit had a new proprietor.

Reviews

[Gregoria Ahmed]

Mark, I enjoyed this piece. The atmosphere, the visuals, the haunting twist--It felt cinematic and bold. People may have different thoughts on structure or style, but art is personal, and this story clearly came from your own imagination and voice. That matters. Whether you refine it further or keep it just as it is, it already has an impact. Thank you for sharing.

[Julie McCarthy (juliesp..]

Wow 🤩
Amazing write
You should publish a book of short stories like this one ! I enjoyed

[JayG]

Take a deep breath. This will sting. It’s not a matter of talent or skill, it’s that you’ve been captured by a common writer’s problem: You, whose “voice” and any emotion within it, can’t be heard, are trying to TELL the reader a story. So, alone on stage, you talk TO the reader, providing history and facts, in the dispassionate voice of an external observer.

What you’ve forgotten is that in all the world only you know the emotion you want placed into the narrator’s voice. You know what each line is GOING to say before you read it. You know what’s about to happen, and the backstory that led to it. So for you, the narrator’s voice isn’t text-to-speech.

For the reader? A voice devoid of emotion is lecturing them on things they don't have context for, or, want to know.

Look at the opening, not as the all knowing author, but as a reader must:

• "The gaslight in Mr. Burns’ establishment, ‘The Gilded Cage,’ always seemed to flicker with a nervous energy, casting long, dancing shadows that swallowed the true grime of the place."

1. Who’s Mr Burns? Unknown. What kind of a place is “The Guilded Cage? Unstated. And confusion cannot be retroactively removed, Where are we in time and space? Damned if I know. So, the line is meaningless as it's read.

2. Gas lights didn’t flicker. The glass around them kept any breeze from entering. And those lamps with mantles, as in today's camping lanterns burned with a steady bright white glare. And, they “seemed to?” To who? And if no one is noticing and reacting to it, who cares?

3. If you have “dancing shadows,” then it IS flickering, not seeming to. Edit edit edit.

So...with the opening line the reader is confused, and were this a submission to a publisher, here is where the rejection would come. Sorry, but as someone who owned a manuscript critiquing service, that’s not a guess.

• "It was a handsome den of sin on the outside, all polished mahogany and etched glass, but within its walls, on any given night in 1870s New York, fortunes were lost, futures were gambled away, and sometimes, lives simply vanished."

These 40 words are generic and contribute nothing, because no one is seeing and reacting to anything. And from a reader’s viewpoint, given that our medium has no pictures, what in the pluperfect hells is a “a handsome den of sin on the outside?” You may have an image in your mind’s eye, but you-never-give-it-to-the-reader, who wants to know what’s going on, not leaern generalities about an “establishment” in an unknown place.

You open with three paragraphs, 276 words, or pretty much the first two standard manuscript pages, in which not a damn thing has happened and no one is on stage. That’s followed by a chronicle of events that’s presented with all the excitement of a report.

But...NO ONE reads fiction to find out what happened. Your reader expects you to make THEM feel as if THEY are living the story as-it-happens. They want to know the mind of the protagonist so deeply that when something happe,s they will react as the protagonist is about to. They want to be entertained, not informed

And there’s your problem, because that can’t be done with anything but the skills of the Commercial Fiction Writing profession. Nothing else works, as this demonstrates.

Writers have been screwing up for centuries. And for just as long, they’ve been learning how to avoid that. Learn those skills and you’ll avoid them, too. Skip that step and...

Why most people screw up is that they forget that the purpose of public education is to ready us for employment. And what kind of writing to employers need? Reports, letters, and other NONFICTION applications. So, nonfiction is all we learn. Professions, like Fiction Writing and Medicine are acquired in addition to that. So, you have a lot of company. But still, you do need those skills. And, for someone who wants to write, the learning is interesting.

So, grab a good book on the basics, like Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict. You’ll enjoy the read, and lots of what she has to say will seem obvious once it's pointed out.

Sorry my news isn't better, but given that the problems are invisible to you until pointed out, I thought you might want to know.

You might want to check a few of my articles and YouTube videos. They’re meant as an overview of the traps and gotchas that catch most of us.

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334raps and gotchas.

- - - - - - - -

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow

“In sum, if you want to improve your chances of publication, keep your story visible on stage and yourself mum.”
~ Sol Stein

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~ Mark Twain

[Davidgeo]

Take a deep breath... you're a self indulgent man child

[JayG]

Apologies, Mark. The foaming-at-the-mouth troll who invaded your thread can't write either fiction or poetry with any competence, and is so jealous that he follows me around like a puppy, begging for a scrap of attention.

He has no respect for the other members, like you, who are seeking honest comment.

I probably spent more time on my critique of your story than he's devoted to learning the skills of poetry, total. So he does serve as an example of why you need to dig into the skills the pros take for granted.

[Davidgeo]

Ha... it's not working' Jay. Keep it up though. it's very entertaining to me describing what you really are.

[Mark Raines]

I writing is like art it's subjective if the readers like it or not at the end of day I just write and share

[JayG]

Think about it: For centuries, they've been improving the skills of writing fiction, and finding ways to avoid the traps. We call that body of accumulated knowledge the Fiction Writing profession.

But...in our school years we learn no professional knowledge, because that's acquired in addition to the general skills of school.

Public education was instituted at the opening of the Industrial Revolution, so that employers would have applicants who possessed a useful and predictable set of skills.

And what kind of writing do employers need? Reports, letters, and other NONFICTION writing. So, all your fiction is being written with nonfiction skills.

Yes they work for you. But you cheat. You begin reading already knowing the story, the backstory and the situation at the opening. For you the narrator's voice is filled with the emotion the reader can't know to place there. So, it works...for you.

And fiction writing is not subjective. all your life you've selected only fiction that was created with the skills of the profession. You can't see the tools or know the author's decision-points as you read. But you do react to, and expect, the result os using those tools. And if presented with work created without those tools you'll reject it in a paragraph. As-will-your-reader.

You had to learn to read and write nonfiction. Will they allow you to write a film script without additional knowledge? Can you write as a journalist, or tech-writer. No, because those are professions...just as is fiction.

You can write in any way you please, of course. And you don't have to take anyone's advice, including mine. And you hurt me not at all if you don't.

But if you want others to enjoy your work, but not enough to spend a few days reading about how to do it? You're wasting the time you spend at the keyboard.

So, again, sorry for having attracted the troll to the thread. And having had my say, I'll just wish you luck with your writing and bow out

[Davidgeo]

Jay, everyone knows how much it hurts you not be taken seriously as a "writing coach". Stop role playing man... it's high cringe and no one's falling for it. Get off the internet and go spend time with your family.

[JayG]

Prove your skill child. Write something that gets a fraction of the comments my work does. You've been trying for years. You dump crap after crap into this site, and you fail every time. You're reduced to including links to songs, and that's pathetic.

Envy is such an ugly emotion.

Day after day, YOU follow me around, whimpering because I do what you can't.

Child, you are, and always will be, a coward, who is so bad at life that you're reduced to following your betters around and licking their feet for attention,

GROW UP!

[Davidgeo]

I'm not here to "prove skill". This isn't a job it's just a hobby. I'm not lost in the delusion like you seem to be.

[JayG]

• I'm not here to "prove skill".

No, you're here as a troll, taking advantage of the anonymity of the internet to behave in a way that in life would have you smacked down, because like most trolls you’re a coward.

You disrespect people who have done nothing to you, like the OP of this thread, and the others you invade. And you follow me around, obsessively because I’m everything you’re not.

I could make you vanish with a click, but knowing that some random schmuck is so obsessed with me that he follows like a puppy is funny.

You can’t make me angry, kid, because I don’t take you seriously. I’d have to respect you for that to happen.

[Davidgeo]

"you can't make me angry".... oh really? haha